Meetings

Join LendingTree and us on Tuesday, June 27, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. What is involved in performance testing or application optimization testing? What role can a developer play in the load testing phase? For that matter, what exactly is “load” testing and why should you care? What conditions should you wrap around your testing efforts? How did improper requirements almost doom one of the most famous aircraft in United States Military history? In this presentation, Geoff Gray will answer all of these questions and much more. You will learn how Santa Claus was able to reach millions of kids. How a leading audit company was able to keep a 7 TB switch at sustained 35% saturation in a test lab. How Microsoft and 323 Studios teamed up to simulate 2 million kids playing Halo Reach the day it was released. How Walt Disney World was able to keep their buses running from the airport to the Magic Kingdom on schedule. And other tales of testing success.

You will also learn about the ugly side. How a poorly-tested major eCommerce site ended up failing and costing the customer millions of dollars. How changing a single property in a test caused two weeks of results to be thrown out and a major bug in the application exposed. How pre-conceived notions can ruin the best testing efforts. And a few other horrors that you will have to hear to believe.

The meeting presenter is Geoff Gray.

Geoff Gray is a Senior Developer and Performance Test Consultant with more than 24 years of experience with Microsoft. He has a B.S. in Computer and Electrical Engineering and has been working (or playing) with computers since 1979. He has created and taught classes in debugging and load testing and has Microsoft “Ship It” awards for contributing code for Windows 95, IIS 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. Geoff’s hobbies include sailing, bicycle riding, photography, and scuba diving. Geoff is an active fan of LEGO and is the photo editor for a fan-based magazine called “BrickJournal.” Geoff has a wife of 16 years and two stepsons; one with a degree in mechanical engineering and the other who is an active duty combat medic with the US Army. You can read his blog at blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/geoffgr.

The meeting sponsor is LendingTree.

LendingTree was founded in 1996 by CEO Doug Lebda to help people comparison shop and get a great deal on the single biggest transaction of their lives: their mortgage. Since then, we’ve facilitated over 65 million loan requests, while becoming a household name. Today we do much more than mortgages. We are the #1 online marketplace in the US for consumers to comparison shop for mortgages, personal loans, credit cards, student loans, auto loans and insurance.

Working with LendingTree offers you a chance to work with top Software Engineers in a unique entrepreneurial environment. We’re a start-up company in a publicly traded suit meaning we can brainstorm exciting new initiatives and have the financial backing to run with them.

No dress code. No clock to punch. No limit on PTO. We hire people with incredible work ethics and let them do their thing. It is our culture for each team member to challenge the status quo, express their opinions, and to stand up, ask for the ball and run with it to meet our aggressive goals and GET STUFF DONE. Learn more and apply today at careers.lendingtree.com.

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Join Signature Consultants and us on Tuesday, May 23, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. Most modern applications require security. However, single page applications (SPAs) introduce unique challenges when it comes to authentication. In general, traditional session-based authentication isn’t a good fit for stateless SPAs. A better approach is to use OAuth tokens provided by a security token service. In this talk, we are going to look at how to build Angular applications that use token-based authentication. Our security token service will be running IdentityServer, an OpenID Connect provider and OAuth 2.0 server framework for ASP.NET.

Mark specializes in cloud computing and web application development. He is a Senior Developer at Logical Advantage in Charlotte, NC.

Mark lives with his wife and a house full of dogs, most of them being foster dogs. Hobbies include helping his wife with her non-profit animal rescue, promoting the development community, and everything Disney. Learn more about Mark at www.DeveloperInfra.com or follow him on Twitter @DeveloperInfra.

The meeting sponsor is Signature Consultants.

Signature Consultants started in 1997 with a singular focus: Provide our clients and consultants with superior staffing solutions. At Signature Consultants, it’s not just about the bottom line; it’s about the people. We focus on the relationships we have with our clients, consultants, and candidates. Our motto, “Getting IT Right,” is reflected in every aspect of our company – it guides our decisions and actions and ensures that our consultants and clients always come first. As a result of these efforts Signature has been recognized as one of the best staffing companies to work (over the last seven years by Staffing Analyst International). Learn more at www.sigconsult.com.

Join TEKsystems and us on Tuesday, April 25, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. Modern web applications built today typically consist of various technologies used to deliver the final solution. Over the last several of months, there have been significant new developments both in front-end frameworks for building single page applications as well as back-end frameworks designed for applications hosted in the cloud. In this session, we will explore using ASP.NET Core to host a Web API that provides services to an Angular (2+) single page application. As a developer, you will take away from this session a solid understanding of how to design a modern web application using these technologies.

The meeting presenter is Richard Taylor.

Richard Taylor is a 25-year software development and technology professional living in Huntersville, NC. His experience includes the design and development of small to enterprise-class applications. For the last 10 years, he has focused on web based applications and that is where his passion lives.

When not developing software, Richard is focused on spending time with his lovely wife Shondrecca and their five children (Richard III, Ayanna, David, Jonathan, and Stephen).

The meeting sponsor is TEKsystems.

By working for TEKsystems, you become part of our dedicated Microsoft Technologies Practice. Since its inception, our Microsoft Technologies Practice has helped hundreds of Microsoft Specialists to find an ideal job opportunity in the marketplace. Our program at TEKsystems specializes in the cornerstone technologies of the Microsoft stack – .NET, SQL Server, and SharePoint. Our team consists of Delivery Experts, in the major market geographies, with ties to the most cutting edge work opportunities.

As a member of the TEKsystems Microsoft Technologies Practice, you will have access to a Market Delivery Expert that focuses on Microsoft Technology jobs around the clock in your local region as well as across the US. In some cases, we may offer you the opportunity to become a full-time employee of TEKsystems and work as a Microsoft expert on our staff or at our most prestigious clients. Be sure to speak with your local TEKsystems contacts Lindsey Thomka Hardin, Cody Martin, Kierra Brown, Holly Cavanaugh, and Amanda Miller about our Microsoft Technologies Practice and how it can benefit your career.

People are at the heart of every successful business initiative. At TEKsystems, we understand people. Every year we deploy over 80,000 IT professionals at 6,000 sites across North America, Europe, and Asia. Our deep insights into IT human capital management enable us to help our clients achieve their business goals – while optimizing their IT workforce strategies. We provide IT staffing solutions, IT talent management expertise, and IT services to help our clients plan, build and run their critical business initiatives. Through our range of quality-focused delivery models, we meet our clients where they are, and take them where they want to go, the way they want to get there. Learn more at www.teksystems.com.

Join AccruePartners and us on Tuesday, March 28, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. The digital nomad life is getting more relevant by the day. If you haven’t dealt with remote work in some fashion, it is probably right around the corner. Many companies are offering remote work as a major perk over competitors, and if you aren’t open to it, you may find it harder to recruit developers in the future. In this unique presentation, we have two different perspectives represented.

First, Glenn will focus on the Manager / Business owner experience of transitioning from an office where all employees worked every day to an environment now where everyone works remotely. Web Station first dealt with this eight years ago and slowly migrated to a 100% distributed, and at times, global workforce. Glenn will touch on the initial fears of remote employees and then the realities of this transformation over the years.

Next, Nick will focus on the developer experience, both as a remote developer and someone who leads a team of remote developers while being the most remote of them all. Nick will illustrate the pros and cons of working remotely from a personal standpoint as well as the tools and processes developed over eight years of an ever increasingly remote development team. There are unique challenges, but the pros outweigh the cons and Nick will demonstrate what has worked well for Web Station.

The meeting presenters are Glenn Boothe and Nick Spiers.

Glenn is originally from Upstate New York where he studied Mathematics and Physics at SUNY Oswego and graduated in 1998 after a stint in the USMC. He founded Web Station in Charlotte, NC soon after and has worked in web technologies ever since. As well as running Web Station, Glenn currently sits on the Windows Azure Websites Advisory Board and has recently joined the Charlotte IoT Board as Brand Ambassador / Social Media Director. Glenn lives in Waxhaw with his wife and two children.

Nick is a native Charlottean and studied Hospitality and Computer Information Systems at Western Carolina University. He joined Web Station in 2007 and is currently CTO / Chief Architect / Lead Developer. Nick has always enjoyed travel and has made it a priority starting back in his college days (why do you think the double major in Hospitality). After a few “test trips,” Nick and his wife Lauren decide to take the plunge and move to Europe for more than two years. While in Europe they visited more than 20 countries and 30 cities all while keeping up with work and leading a team of developers. Nick recently moved back to Charlotte with his wife and 3-month-old baby Ethan.

The meeting sponsor is AccruePartners.

At the forefront of Talent Workforce Solutions, AccruePartners is your source for today’s top talent. Our proven business systems combined with an unwavering commitment elevates our practice to the forefront of the recruiting industry. With predictable precision, we deliver top-tier workforce solutions across the United States meeting the demands of a dynamic business environment for mid-size and large, Fortune 500 companies. AccruePartners offers temporary and direct hire placements in the following specialty areas: Accounting & Finance, Information Technology, Engineering, Financial Services, Human Resources, Office & Marketing.

Powered with insightful market intelligence and an unrivaled depth of expertise, we are positioned to provide clients, candidates, and consultants with actionable results. AccruePartners demands an unparalleled quality of service and recruiting expertise that results in a precise match for client companies and a shortened learning curve for candidates. Whether you have a local need or your search requires a national reach, our team of seasoned recruiters consistently delivers a match for every search.

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Join Signature Consultants and us on Tuesday, February 28, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. Business logic is tough. The rules are complex, sometimes contradicting each other, and they change a lot. All the things that we hate about business logic are also the reasons most businesses are in business. We need to accommodate these complexities, adapt to these changes and do it quickly, or our favorite company may not stay in business. Most code generation strategies focus on generating interfaces or proxies. Simple code with little logic, but imagine if we could automate creating some of the most complex logic found in most applications. Instead of hand writing complex business rules that are going to change on the whim of a competitor or the wish of a client or a shift in the market, we can build systems that will allow us to describe the business rules and enable the computer to write code. Sounds like science fiction, but this real.

In this presentation we will:

see an example of structuring business logic in database tables

what it would look like to pull that structured logic back into the code

generate code to implement the logic described in the database using the power of Roslyn

Nick a software consultant living in Columbia, South Carolina. He has done full stack development on projects ranging from full-featured Loan Origination Systems for prominent mortgage lenders to rapid prototypes for small start-ups. He has experience with full lifecycle development from initial inception through post deployment support.

Nick published articles and books on a broad range of technical topics including MVC, T4, Roslyn, Software Metrics, Design Patterns, Web Design. You can follow him on Twitter @Neh123us, where he also announces his blog posts, published articles, and speaking engagements.

The meeting sponsor is Signature Consultants.

Signature Consultants was established in 1997 with a singular focus: Provide our clients and consultants with superior staffing solutions. At Signature Consultants, it’s not just about the bottom line; it’s about the people. We focus on the relationships we have with our clients, consultants, and candidates. Our motto, “Getting IT Right,” is reflected in every aspect of our company – it guides our decisions and actions and ensures that our consultants and clients always come first. Learn more at www.sigconsult.com.

Join us for a very special celebration on Tuesday, January 24, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. The Enterprise Developers Guild began meeting in August 1998 and this month will be our 200th meeting! We are very honored to announce that the Corporate Vice President of Visual Studio Team Services, Brian Harry, will be joining us as our special guest speaker. We’ll announce additional details about an extraordinary program to celebrate this milestone soon.

Our very special guest speaker is Brian Harry.

Brian Harry is the Corporate Vice President of Visual Studio Team Services. By day he works in Visual Studio Team Services, Team Foundation Server, and MSDN. On weekends, he works on a farm with cows, goats, pigs, ducks, chickens and more. You can read his blog at blogs.msdn.com/bharry and follow him on Twitter at @bharry.

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Join us and TEKsystems on Tuesday, November 22, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. In only minutes, you’ll learn how to install .NET on Linux and create your first program. You’ll learn about: the different parts of .NET Core 1.0; package managers and NuGet; the new command line interface (CoreCLI); and a great editor that is not Visual Studio. By the end of this presentation, you will know how to create a C# program that runs on Linux. No smoke, no mirrors, no tricks; it just works.

We’ll see how to create a basic MVC program, and then we’ll run that program in a Linux container. We’ll debug the program, running in a Linux container, from within Visual Studio running on Windows. You’ll also learn why this is important to you and your organization.

Finally, you’ll leave with all the tools needed to start right away, including a Developer’s Copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that you can start using on your PC or Mac today.

The meeting presenter is Don Schenck.

A developer since the beginning of time, Don is currently a Director of Developer Experience at Red Hat, with a focus on Microsoft .NET on Linux. His mission is to bring .NET developers into the Linux and open source communities. Prior to Red Hat, Don was a Developer Advocate at Rackspace. He still enjoys cooking and still hates the designated hitter rule.

The meeting is sponsored by TEKsystems.

By working for TEKsystems you become part of our dedicated Microsoft Technologies Practice. Since its inception our Microsoft Technologies Practice has helped hundreds of Microsoft Specialists to find the most ideal job opportunities in the marketplace. Our program at TEKsystems specializes in the cornerstone technologies of the Microsoft stack – .NET, SQL Server and SharePoint. Our team consists of Delivery Experts, in key market geographies, with ties to the most cutting edge work opportunities.

As a member of the TEKsystems Microsoft Technologies Practice you will have access to a Market Delivery Expert that focuses on Microsoft Technology jobs around the clock in your local region as well as across the US. In some cases you will be afforded the opportunity to become a full time employee of TEKsystems and work as a Microsoft expert on our staff or at our key clients. Be sure to speak with your local TEKsystems contact Lindsey Thomka, Samantha Reinbold, Cody Bunnell, and Victoria Jorio about our Microsoft Technologies Practice and how it can benefit your career.

People are at the heart of every successful business initiative. At TEKsystems, we understand people. Every year we deploy over 80,000 IT professionals at 6,000 client sites across North America, Europe and Asia. Our deep insights into IT human capital management enable us to help our clients achieve their business goals – while optimizing their IT workforce strategies. We provide IT staffing solutions, IT talent management expertise and IT services to help our clients plan, build and run their critical business initiatives. Through our range of quality-focused delivery models, we meet our clients where they are, and take them where they want to go, the way they want to get there. Learn more at www.teksystems.com.

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Join us and AvidXchange on Tuesday, October 25, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. We are going to take a deep dive into ASP.NET Core MVC.

The meeting presenter is Joe Audette.

Joe Audette started out working with MS Access 2.0/95 and VB6 back in 1996. He has been doing web development since the beginning with Classic ASP and then ASP.NET when it first came out. Over the years, he has done quite a bit of work in content management and ecommerce. He wrote the blog module for a thing called Rainbow Portal back in 2003 and founded the mojoPortal project in 2004. He actively developed mojoPortal and commercial add on features until late 2014 and still support it for any security issues. He began working on a new set of web components in late 2014 with MVC 5 and moved to ASP.NET Core in June of 2015 (beta 4 or 5). Now he has a number of related open source projects and components branded as “cloudscribe”. The main projects are cloudscribe.Core which is a multi-tenant web application foundation for managing sites, users and roles, and cloudscribe.SimpleContent which is a blog and content engine that can be used with Open Live Writer and can work with or without a database. He is currently trying to bootstrap his own business again building commercial components that can integrate with ASP.NET Core apps including but not limited to my open source apps. You can read his blog at www.joeaudette.com and follow him on Twitter at @joeaudette.

The meeting is sponsored by AvidXchange.

AvidXchange’s software-as-a-service solution has automated the invoice and payment process for more than 4,500 clients throughout North America, spanning industries that include Real Estate, Financial Services, Energy and Construction. AvidXchange has been recognized as one of the 50 fastest-growing private companies in the Charlotte area for four consecutive years, one of the Best Places to Work in Charlotte for six consecutive years, and among Deloitte’s Fast 500 in 2015. In the midst of record growth, AvidXchange has remained true to its most valued competitive advantage—its people. Learn more at www.avidxchange.com.

Join us and CapTech on Tuesday, September 27, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. There has been a lot of activity with Angular over the last couple of years. As a developer, especially a web developer, the term/name Angular is not foreign to you. You have probably discussed it with other developers, you have read about it in developer trade publications, and you have probably written a sample “Hello Angular 2” application just to get a feel for Angular 2’s value proposition. Now you are ready to build a real application but you have some reservation on how to get started or if you have started, you are questioning if you are building your application correctly. In this session, we will explore using Angular 2 to build the major features common to all web applications. This should give you a solid foundation for using Angular 2 as an effective tool in your development toolbox.

The meeting presenter is Richard Taylor.

Richard is an experienced, dedicated, detailed-oriented technology and management professional with a career reflecting strong leadership qualifications coupled with “hands on” technology experience. Knowledgeable in the design, development, implementation, support, and management of computer systems. Focused on achieving results while utilizing advanced technologies and business solutions to meet a variety of needs. You can read his blog at www.rightincode.com and follow him on Twitter at @rightincode.

The meeting is sponsored by CapTech.

CapTech is an award-winning national IT management consulting firm that bridges the gap between business and technology. We deliver Transformation, Customer Engagement, Data & Analytics and Custom IT solutions for America’s leading Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. Our collaborative approach helps organizations grow their business, engage with customers and turn information into powerful data assets. It’s one of the reasons we were on the Inc. 500/5000 list for 9 years. Our clients tell us it’s because others talk, but CapTech listens. You can learn more at www.captechconsulting.com.

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Join us and Logical Advantage on Tuesday, August 23, at 6:00 PM in the Mt. Kilimanjaro/Mt. Everest rooms of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. Didn’t get your golden ticket to //Build/? Couldn’t get the time off from work to go to San Francisco? Don’t have the bandwidth to wade through all 500+ hours of content on Channel 9? No problem, Jamie Dixon has you covered. In this talk, we will look at the highlights from //Build/, Microsoft’s premier developer conference that occurred last month. We will pick through at all of the announcements, sessions, and labs to find all of the stuff you should care about as a Microsoft developer. In addition, Jamie will give you the DL (“down low” for those of you without a teenager) on all of the hallway and happy hour conversations that he had with the Microsoft teams.

The meeting presenter is Jamie Dixon.

Jamie Dixon has been writing code for as long as he can remember and has been getting paid to do it since 1995. He was using C# and JavaScript almost exclusively until discovering F# and now combines all three languages for the problem at hand. He has a passion for discovering overlooked gems in data sets and merging software engineering techniques to scientific computing. When he codes for fun, he spends his time using Phidgets, Netduinos, and Raspberry Pis or spending time in Kaggle competitions using F# or R.

Jamie has a BSCS in Computer Science and a Master’s in Public Health. He is the former Chair of his town’s Information Services Advisory Board and is an outspoken advocate for Open Data. He also is involved with his local .NET User Group (TRINUG) with an emphasis on data analytics, machine learning, and the internet of things (IoT). He is the author of Mastering .NET Machine Learning.

Jamie lives in Cary, North Carolina with his wonderful wife Jill and their three awesome children: Sonoma, Sawyer, and Sloan. He blogs weekly at jamessdixon.wordpress.com and can be found on Twitter @jamie_dixon.

The meeting is sponsored by Logical Advantage.

Our mission is to partner with our clients to provide strategies and solutions that maximize the ROI of Enterprise Asset Intelligence and Human Capital Development. Learn more at www.logicaladvantage.com.

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Join us and Signature Consultants on Tuesday, July 26, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. We live in an exciting time where more and more everyday item “things” are becoming smart! “Things” have sensors and can communicate to other “things” and can provide control to more “things”. The Internet of Things, IoT, is upon us in a huge way and makers are rapidly inventing cool gadgets every day.

See Dan’s latest IoT projects on Microsoft’s Windows 10 IoT Core running on the Rasberry Pi and connecting to services in Azure. He is using Bluetooth Beacons and Azure Machine Learning to predict the health of this pets. He is also using the Alexa Skills Kit API for Amazon Echo to send messages to a Particle Photon microcontroller (Wi-Fi) to make a servo controlled hand wave to the audience based on natural speech commands.

The meeting presenter is Dan Thyer.

Dan is co-founder and CTO of Logical Advantage, www.logicaladvantage.com. Logical Advantage has successfully delivered software and technology solutions for 12 years and was recently awarded an IT-oLogy Blue Diamond award for Human Capital Development. Dan is president of the Charlotte Internet of Things (IoT) and the Logical Advantage Tech Talks user groups and is on the steering committee of the NC Regional Internet of Things and the Enterprise Developers Guild. Dan is passionate about building cool stuff, writing articles, having fun with technology and talking about it in user groups. Dan’s articles and videos have accumulated over half a million views and Microsoft Channel 9 has featured Dan’s projects 8 times! He was recently awarded Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional award for his engagement in the community.

The meeting is sponsored by Signature Consultants.

Signature Consultants was established in 1997 with a singular focus: Provide our clients and consultants with superior staffing solutions. At Signature Consultants, it’s not just about the bottom line; it’s about the people. We focus on the relationships we have with our clients, consultants, and candidates. Our motto, “Getting IT Right,” is reflected in every aspect of our company – it guides our decisions and actions and ensures that our consultants and clients always come first. Learn more at www.sigconsult.com.

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Join us and Logical Advantage on Tuesday, June 28, at 6:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) of the Microsoft Charlotte Office. Inspired by a true story. Garbage In – how bad data can still get in to modern databases. Garbage Out – how that bad data can crash your production Line of Business (LOB) application. Elaine Cahill will demonstrate practical applications of defensive programming concepts with C#, JavaScript, T-SQL, stored procedures, web forms and razor views using ASP.NET and SQL Server. This is an excellent refresher course for seasoned developers and extremely useful for junior developers and students.

The meeting presenter is Elaine Cahill.

Elaine Cahill received a Bachelor of Science from North Carolina State University in 2008 — Go Pack! Microsoft Certified Professional 2000. Microsoft Certified Solution Developer Visual Studio 6.0 2001. Experienced manager and full stack .NET/SQL developer 10+ years. Work experience using web forms, MVC, C#, SOA, jQuery, HTML5 and a bit of everything in between. American Citizen but grew up in Manchester, England.

The meeting is sponsored by Logical Advantage.

Our mission is to partner with our clients to provide strategies and solutions that maximize the ROI of Enterprise Asset Intelligence and Human Capital Development. Learn more at www.logicaladvantage.com.

Meetup Location

About

The Enterprise Developers Guild is an independently run, volunteer user group that meets monthly to discuss and share information on a variety of Microsoft-centric technology topics. We offer an excellent way to receive a technical education and meet with peers to get more out of the latest Microsoft platforms, products, technologies, and resources.

The Guild meets the fourth Tuesday of every month, except December, at the Microsoft Office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Free guest parking is available in designated spots at the front of the buildings. Meetings are from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. Food and drinks are free courtesy of our meeting host.